Asylum Seekers, Social Work and Racism

Asylum seeking continues to be a highly emotive and politically charged issue. This book analyses social work through the concept of 'xenoracism' to challenge the outdated concepts of racism that still pervade social work. Using discourse analysis, it explores how language is used to construct asylum seekers in specific ways within social workers' narratives. It illuminates how the deployment of specific linguistic resources legitimates these constructs by rendering them as reasonable and acceptable ways of viewing asylum seekers. Asylum Seekers, Social Work and Racism demonstrates how racist discourse and exclusionary tendencies can occur without reference to overt forms of racism that are based on biological categorisations. Significantly, Masocha illustrates how social workers can counteract these exclusionary tendencies through their discursive practices. In demonstrating the complexities and ever-shifting contours of exclusionary discourse, it will be of great interest for researchers, students and practitioners alike--Publisher's website